The Correction: Entry 06 – I am the architect of the biggest void in my life.

The Correction: Entry 06 – I am the architect of the biggest void in my life.

The Correction: Entry 06 (v2)

Ricardo called me out after he heard the first episode of the podcast. I’ve been paying attention differently since.

It was raining in Nairobi.

My friend was leaving my house to run some errands. He’s a biker so I assumed he was heading out on his bike.

“You forgot to bring your rain gear,” I said. He’d already called an Uber.

I didn’t notice in the moment. I noticed later, when he came back dry, and the sentence I’d said landed differently in my head. I hadn’t answered a question. I hadn’t even responded to a situation. I’d invented the situation. Constructed a small problem so I could be the one who saw it first.

That’s a quieter version of the pattern than I’d been writing about. Not utility offered. Utility manufactured.

Later that day we talked about it. He’s one of my closest friends. We’ve known each other a long time. We are very different — he is more considered than I am, less forthcoming, quieter. Beneath the quiet is a sharp mind, and when he speaks he tends to have already thought it through.

He said something I haven’t stopped thinking about.

He said he’d learnt to communicate using questions. So the other person has a say.

He gave me the example back. You said you’d forgotten your rain gear. You could have asked — hey, how will you cope on your bike now that it’s raining? One phrase represents control. The other is collaborative.

He didn’t say it as a correction. He said it the way he says most things — humbly, almost in passing. As if it were just a thing he had figured out for himself and was leaving in the room in case anyone else needed it.

I needed it.

I have spent most of my life leading with statements. Diagnoses. Observations delivered as fact. You forgot to bring your rain gear. You should call this person. You need to do this. It sounds like help. Sometimes it is. But it leaves no room. It positions me as the one who sees. And the other person as the one being seen. No one sees me. I am the architect of the biggest void in my life.

I have a name for what I do. Workplace utility in friendships. The way I’d communicate with a colleague leaking into rooms where it doesn’t belong. With people who don’t need solving. Who just want to be in the room with me.

The friend in question didn’t tell me I was doing it wrong. He told me what he’d learned. Two different things.

It’s raining. He Ubered. I said the wrong thing anyway.

Am I starting to notice sooner. Or am I just getting better at writing about it.

The Correction: Entry 06. More to come.